imagine how it is to touch the stove.

technically we’re ALL, always LARPing, because the Self is only a construct,

I want a new character

Then make one.

Everyone talking about posts that changed their brain chemistry seem to be leaving out this classic, which probably propelled me into activism and more self confidence in a way that I cannot put into words.

'is gortash brown actually based on some features of his appearance if you squint' you guys are . So close to cracking the code on how deeply fundamentally hostile the fantasy of dungeons and dragons is to people of color

like the double whammy of race in your bog standard dnd-like fantasy is first that race is biologically real, and second that people of color can only exist in the world as caricatures or as implicitly assimilated. a person can be recognized as black or east asian or central american insofar as they can have racialized features associated with those peoples, but they can't be meaningfully black or east asian or central american in a way that connects with real-world experiences or cultural practices. in a lot of cases the closest you'll get is some exoticized caricature applied to a non-human biologically distinct race.

well, of course it's not equivalent to real life - it's fantasy! except that the western white experience is not only totally compatible with this fantasy but in fact the assumed default. i do a bit about dak-wai being a totally lore-friendly name, but the fact you can have guys running around with fully french or english names no problem, and yet Being Chinese Is Not Supported, is racist. it's hostility towards and rejection of people of color built into a world that accepts white people just fine.

you can exist as a person of color in fantasy to the extent that you can look like one but you cannot act like one. this is by definition a fantasy of assimilation. and because race is not actually just about Looking Different, this makes attempted racial coding extremely fraught. okay, this character has this physical feature. ...so what? what does that mean if in every other aspect of their dress, their culture, their name, their practices, they are indistinguishable from a whiteness that is treated as default - or if they are different, they're exoticized in a way that bears no actual resemblance to any real culture? if this is supposed to 'represent' someone in reality, then who - and what are you saying about them?

So uh….some dude apparently recreated Adobe Photoshop feature-for-feature, for FREE, and it runs in your browser.

Anyway, fuck Adobe, and enjoy!

Give credit to the 30-year-old who worked on this for free and offers this service for free!

WHAT?!

I study graphic design and my tutor recommended and used this in his classes at art college last year, it’s so good it has SO many features for free, I really recommend it, even if you’re just trying to learn the basics of PS, such a wonderful thing <3

this site is amazing.

“Kitty practicing the lion dance for the Chinese New Year” 

(via)

HAPPY PLAYFUL TAIL FLICKS

KITTY LIKES BEING THE NEW YEAR’S LION

marty scorsese cosmic guilt tuesday everyone give it up for marty scorsese cosmic guilt tuesday

i do not at all mean this in a perjorative manner, but i do think it’s important to be able to consume a piece of media and go, “i’m not the audience for this” and be able to just walk away 

there doesn’t have to be something wrong or “problematic” about something for a person to not like it. personal taste is personal taste. but something not doing it for you doesn’t mean it automatically has to be wrong or bad. it’s just not for you. 

There’s been several times when I’ve watched a thing and been like, they clearly did what they intended to do, and did it well, and I don’t want any part of it. This is a high quality and deeply unpleasant piece of art.

“This is a high quality and deeply unpleasant piece of art” is a wonderful line, I love it, I feel it in my soul

too good a take to be left in the tags

- Sarah Ruhl, 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time To Write

Do you hate Valentine’s Day? Does it make you feel lonely and sad?

Great news bestie, I have the perfect replacement holiday for you:

James “Colonizer Bitch” Cook was murdered in Hawai’i by my ancestors on Feb 14th, 1779, on Kealakekua Bay. This iconic move ended his reign of terror across the Pacific, where he ruined everything and was overall a massive dick. Buy yourself some chocolate and fondly remember how Kānaka Maoli stabbed James to death and burned his corpse. It’s the perfect holiday for all ages ❤️

Rest in pieces James Cook, you haole bitch.

James Cook entered Hawai'i pretending he was a god, and he left Hawai'i in a bag.

May his legacy, like his corpse, be scattered to the wind and sea.

the most important question you can ask yourself when designing a magic system in fiction is "wouldn't it be fucked up if this happened"

your first priority when developing a magic system should be to make it as cool as possible. your second priority should be making the audience sick to their stomach.

both drawn to life books are free to read on archive.org?? and downloadable as pdf???? what!! YO HOLY SHIT

a coworker yesterday was asking me about these behind my chair, and gun to my head, if you asked me what was the single best drawing book of all time -- it'd be these. there's a reason i keep them in irl arm's length.

not to toot my horn but i get a lot of comments about "believable life"/body language in my drawings, and i owe that to this book. Walt Stanchfield -the author- was one of the main mentors to a ton of the rennaisance era disney animators (Glen Keane, Musker, Deja, etc). this guy understands both the kinectic sense of how bodies move and squish/stretch, and how people "act", and composition/silhouette, and is honestly just a thoroughly decent dude.

some screenshots!

“Getting” yourself to write

Yesterday, I was trawling iTunes for a decent podcast about writing. After a while, I gave up, because 90% of them talked incessantly about “self-discipline,” “making writing a habit,” “getting your butt in the chair,” “getting yourself to write.” To me, that’s six flavors of fucked up.

Okay, yes—I see why we might want to “make writing a habit.” If we want to finish anything, we’ll have to write at least semi-regularly. In practical terms, I get it.

But maybe before we force our butts into chairs, we should ask why it’s so hard to “get” ourselves to write. We aren’t deranged; our brains say “I don’t want to do this” for a reason. We should take that reason seriously.

Most of us resist writing because it hurts and it’s hard. Well, you say, writing isn’t supposed to be easy—but there’s hard, and then there’s hard. For many of us, sitting down to write feels like being asked to solve a problem that is both urgent and unsolvable—“I have to, but it’s impossible, but I have to, but it’s impossible.” It feels fucking awful, so naturally we avoid it.

We can’t “make writing a habit,” then, until we make it less painful. Something we don’t just “get” ourselves to do.

The “make writing a habit” people are trying to do that, in their way. If you do something regularly, the theory goes, you stop dreading it with such special intensity because it just becomes a thing you do. But my god, if you’re still in that “dreading it” phase and someone tells you to “make writing a habit,” that sounds horrible.

So many of us already dismiss our own pain constantly. If we turn writing into another occasion for mute suffering, for numb and joyless endurance, we 1) will not write more, and 2) should not write more, because we should not intentionally hurt ourselves.

Seriously. If you want to write more, don’t ask, “how can I make myself write?” Ask, “why is writing so painful for me and how can I ease that pain?” Show some compassion for yourself. Forgive yourself for not being the person you wish you were and treat the person you are with some basic decency. Give yourself a fucking break for avoiding a thing that makes you feel awful.

Daniel José Older, in my favorite article on writing ever, has this to say to the people who admonish writers to write every day:

The antidote, he says, is to treat yourself kindly:

Writing has the potential to bring us so much joy. Why else would we want to do it? But first we’ve got to unlearn the pain and dread and anxiety and shame attached to writing—not just so we can write more, but for our own sakes! Forget “making writing a habit”—how about “being less miserable”? That’s a worthy goal too!

Luckily, there are ways to do this. But before I get into them, please absorb this lesson: if you want to write, start by valuing your own well-being. Start by forgiving yourself. And listen to yourself when something hurts.

Next post: freewriting

Ask me a question or send me feedback! Podcast recommendations welcome…

I need to read this again and again and again

i am LOSING IT

the sequel

When you realize this man is the voice of Carlos from Welcome to Night Vale

Wait he is? That’s what he looks like? What is this video called

It’s a Ted talk by Dylan Marron “Empathy Is Not Endorsement” which is one that all of us may need to listen to, tbh

Also listen to his podcast: Conversations with People Who Hate Me from Night Vale Presents.

“In 1404, King Taejong fell from his horse during a hunting expedition. Embarrassed, looking to his left and right, he commanded, “Do not let the historian find out about this.” To his disappointment, the historian accompanying the hunting party included these words in the annals, in addition to a description of the king’s fall.“

LMFAOOOOOO rip to that guy

i thought maybe this was fake, but there’s even a citation!

Taejong Sillok Book 7. 5th year of King Taejong’s Reign (1404), February 8.

Happy 618th anniversary of the day King Taejong fell from his horse!

Apparently the recorders were really intense about this. We have a record of King Taejong complaining about a recorder who followed him on a hunt in disguise and another who eavesdropped on him behind a screen. No one was allowed to see the records, even the king (one king did and killed five men based on what was written there, after which they took greater care to ensure it would never happen again), and changing the content or disclosing it was a capital punishment. Even when there were rival political factions trying to influence the writers, they wrote down what was a revision and what wasn’t and kept an original version with no revisions in it.

They also made sure to back up their data. They made four copies of it, then when three copies were lost in the Imrim Wars they decided to make five more copies just in case. One copy was destroyed in a rebellion, another was partially damaged in an invasion, and Japan stole one copy during their occupation and moved it to Tokyo University, where it was mostly destroyed in the Kanto Earthquake (47 books remained and were returned to South Korea in 2006). Now the whole thing is digitized, free on the internet, and translated into modern Korean for all to see.

It took centuries of meticulous recorders, justifiably paranoid copiers, absolutely determined historians, and painstaking infrastructure for this joke to be possible. Happy 618th anniversary to the day King Taejong fell from his horse.

Happy 619th anniversary to the day King Taejong fell from his horse!

Happy 620th anniversary of the day King Taejong fell from his horse!

People dressed up in various style of Yi attire for the Torch Festival (火把节). The Yi people (彝族) are one of 56 official ethnic groups in China.

There's one charity that I haven't seen shared here personally, and that's Care for Gaza.

They're shared a lot on twitter as a reputable on-the-ground relief source. You can donate to their gofundme to help their efforts here.

They’re a grassroot organisation that regularly supply Palestinians with fresh food!

the new American Gothic. // artist unknown, feel free to tag and tell me who painted this.

this is by mexican american artist Criselda Vasquez, and here's her words on the painting via it's instagram post:

"As the American-born daughter of two Mexican immigrants, I illustrate their plight and the plight of many in my community with my art. I want to expose the heart-breaking pain of what a Mexican immigrant’s family goes through. I focus on bringing my family's world into the light and out of the shadows. My paintings are best described as visual comments on the hidden daily reality of the Mexican-American experience. These portraits and still lifes reveal my family in their own authentic environment and expose how I live in two worlds. My paintings layer the American culture over the Mexican world. I feel society needs to be aware of the humanity on the other side of the door.

The two most important people in my life, my parents, are also the two who motivated me to develop such a strong concept. When my parents pose for these paintings, their faces are reduced to extremely raw and somehow vulnerable expressions. Sadly, they strive to be invisible every day. They don’t have to pretend to illustrate the invisible. They have dealt with constant rejection, suspicion and fear so long, that it seems now that it comes naturally to them. I strive to capture how their expressions deliver that sense of tiredness, resignation, and quiet acceptance. It seems relevant to show that underneath all the politicization and undeserved labeling this community receives, these are regular people just like all of us. In the long tradition of immigrants that come to the United States, they have made homes here and they are just trying to live a simple life with a bit of security and hopefulness for their children."

her ig// her tiktok